Called Darkside this evening, since it's starting to get to the point where I'd really prefer to see him in person rather than playing hit-or-miss phone tag. Hugs don't transmit well; neither does the peace of spending time directly in casual contact, not quite. It can be close sometimes.

Saturday is probably not a go; he's still job-hunting. I'm tempted to show up anyway, just to be stubborn and obnoxious and try and jar some life and lack of anguish back into him.

There was punnery. I spoke about my recent accomplishments at work. It's not Monday, but I'm still proud of having convinced the geek in Chicago that I was a fellow geek with one word.

"Okay. We're going to do something different. Click on the 'Start' button. Click on 'All Programs'. Click on 'Accessories'. Click on 'Command Prompt'." (I already had one open, but I'd been following along like a dutiful little end-user.) "Now type the letters 'I', 'P' --"
" 'ipconfig'?" I asked innocently.
"Yes!" the Chicago geek said in triumph. After that, it was a geek-to-geek call, not a geek-to-end-user call.

And K-Bone is learning, and I'm teaching, and I'm visibly getting things wrapped up there, though not quite visibly as far as everyone's concerned. But I can feel it.

My wisdom teeth are out; I still make wisecracks. Darkside mentioned Little Shop of Horrors; we geeked a bit over that. He mentioned that he far preferred it to Rocky Horror.
"How did you wind up encountering that, by the way?" I asked. (He keeps shuddering when he encounters my Rocky Horror poster.)
It turns out that he has some relative or someone who watches the movie every Halloween, and he's none too pleased with this. I could see how something not particularly good, when repeated, could be as bloody irritating as it is hilarious and campy. Darkside just watched it with the wrong crowd to get to liking it, and now it'll probably stay that way for good. And you know? That's fair enough. That's very much fair enough.

I let him know yet again that he was the one person I could turn to whenever I needed to hear something in particular. Even if it was for me to belt up, stop whining, and get with the program. He's good for telling me the right things, even though he may not think so at the time.